GREAT METAPHOR: DAY 194

  I need to do some navel gazing this morning. It doesn’t offer much in the way of spectator sport but for the gazer, it is therapeutic. Reading this might be about as exciting as watching someone study a road map. Still the person engaged can collect and correlate useful information that would be unavailable otherwise. Navel gazing requires me to internalize, to mediate with myself, to weight what might come next, simulate other possibilities. Often it revisits old ideas to see if they have shifted their feet. Gazing can simply beg questions; if-then or, either-or. Sometimes all I need is to reframe a question and clarity emerges out of the murk. 
The current social climate (politics & religion) is uncomfortable if not disheartening but like the weather, I’m stuck with it. A little navel gazing can’t hurt. I’ve heard it said, a lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client. Trying to analyze one’s own psyche would seem the same but I like to think my navel gazing is more like random shuffling of my ducks rather than trying to get them lined up.
I have spent many, many hours reading, studying, discussing and rethinking why it is, how it is that people believe and behave as they do. We (humans) are intelligent and resourceful, we use conscious intellect to theorize and invent both gadgets and schemes to serve our every whim. But we haven’t made the leap yet, the one where emotional bias concedes to rules of reason. Tribal instinct and self-indulgence continue to drive human/human relations. E.O. Wilson said it best; with a great metaphor; he calls us “. . .an evolutionary chimera picking up things from every age without fully transitioning out of any one era. That's why we are a complicated mix of paleolithic emotions, medieval leftovers like banks and religion, and now the latest addition: God-like technology.” Mankind has mastered interplanetary travel yet lacks the insight, certainly lacks the will to mend his own inhumanity. Imagine a family with a new, smart television. They set it up on its stand, hardwire the TV to a solar panel and cut off the power cord. Then they use the cut-off cord to strangle strangers who come to the door. 
Nobody wants to believe such stuff so we believe what makes us feel good. Denial and confabulation (another great word) allow people to justify horrible behavior. Rulers, leaders, whatever the culture or nationality, they talk trash in the moment but like Gilgamesh, they think if they get it right they can be Gods; and Gods don’t have to answer to anybody, ever. Wouldn’t that be a hoot; where do I sign up?
Collectively, we are addicted to comfort and convenience (allowed to survive) so we do what is required to maintain status quo, like bees in the hive. Like those bees, we are a super-social species, we need each other. But we are also super-creative, unlike the bees. We can’t get by on instinct alone, have always needed a backstory that gives life meaning and purpose. When language was relatively new, Myth (Human-story) was created that supported and validated a particular social order. We still require myth, it is where you look for a moral measure to gauge how you are doing. From Zeus to Jesus, myth has given us a blueprint for what is acceptable, right and wrong, what we should aspire to and who we can safely emulate. 
E.O. Wilson is right there with Crazy Horse and MLK Jr. in my own personal mythology. Most of my countrymen would choose to emulate Wayne La Pierre or a Confederate general who lost at war but endures in the myth. My vision of what makes a worthy purpose is out of sync with what is popular and prideful but it is mine just the same. Keeping with Wilson, when time was kept on the calendar and twenty miles was still a long way, religion served a worthy purpose. It created infrastructure for an extended community where strangers could identify with each other and serve the greater good. In the new century, it has become little more than another power seeking, political ideology where Jesus would be crucified for defending his right to carry a dagger and a sword. 
I am not complaining. A thousand years ago, anywhere you look on the planet, life was bleak and suffering was the norm. The human experience has improved dramatically, universally. It is hard to imagine the life and times of a medieval commoner. Thinking about a return to the good old days, when America was great; think again. I may not like the President (I don’t) and I may think our legal system is corrupt (it is) and when conservatives tell me that I am naive (I already knew that) I let it go and when I tell them they have a blind spot in their moral fabric (and they do) they deny, deny, deny. I give thanks for living in the present. The good old days weren’t all that good; what seemed so good was that we were young.